People in Hong Kong and Taiwan write and read the same text – Chinese Traditional.

However, if you have ever visited these two places, you would have surprisingly found out that they are speaking “totally different languages”! Hong Kong people speak Cantonese, while people in Taiwan speak Mandarin. 

Why is it like this? Yes this is a situation quite confusing for non-Chinese speakers. Let me explain it this way: Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional are two different writing forms of Chinese text, while Cantonese and Mandarin are two oral “dialects” spoken by Chinese people. For more details, please read my articles: Chinese Simplified vs. Chinese Traditional, and Cantonese vs. Mandarin. 

As I said at the beginning of the document, people in Hong Kong and Taiwan write and read the same text – Chinese Traditional. So is there any difference between the ZHHK (Chinese text in Hong Kong) and ZHTW (Chinese text in Taiwan)? Sure there is!

ZHHK and ZHTW had been evolving in their own ways in the past century, and developed a great number of terms unique to their language environment. This is especially the case in modern documents. Let's list a few examples in the table below:

It’s OK for the HK people to read Taiwan-style Chinese text or for the Taiwan people to read HK-style text – they can understand the content without any problem, but that won’t make them as comfortable as reading the text in their own language style. 

The tone of wording is also slightly different. When we say ZHHK, we must make the text read suitable for Cantonese speakers. When we provide ZHTW documents, we need to adapt it to mandarin tongues. 

Therefore, for those text with great significance and extreme cultural sensitivity, for example the ads and important marketing brochures, we need to at least get them read through by the “native speakers” residing in either HK or Taiwan, thus to ensure your text delivers the right subtle feeling to the targeted audience. !